YouTube turns 10, celebrates undisputed reign in video-sharing

With 300 hours of video now uploaded every minute, YouTube has triggered the rise of influential media hubs that supplied free content. To ring in its 10th anniversary, YouTube devoted the entire month of May to celebrating everything that makes the video-sharing site what it is today

After a decade of being the frontrunner in the global video-sharing business, YouTube has been celebrating its 10th anniversary in style. From picking the 20 most iconic ads on YouTube since 2005 to a montage of "A to Z of YouTube" to infographics to quizzes, the website is leaving no stone unturned to celebrate this milestone.

Celebration campaign

To ring in its 10th anniversary, YouTube devoted the entire month of May to celebrating everything that makes the video-sharing site what it is today. For each day, a letter representing a certain aspect of the site was highlighted.

While the daily celebrations may have ended, YouTube is still not done celebrating. They have now combined the past month’s worth of coverage into a montage video.

Watch the video here:

The video's description mentions all sorts of different videos, ranging from those amazing Old Spice ads to memes like Grumpy Cat. It attempts to show just how many different videos have made an impact over the years — and just how different they were from one another.

The milestones

With 300 hours of video now uploaded every minute, YouTube has triggered the rise of influential media hubs that supplied free content. Social networking sites took the basic idea from YouTube, and graduated to building networks where such free content could be shared. 18 months since its launch, the success eventually culminated in a $1.76 billion sale to Google.

2007 was a big year for YouTube. In May 2007, the website launched its Partner Program to let people get paid for their viral content. Few months later, the website teamed up with CNN to host the presidential debate for the 2008 election cycle. In August 2007, Google decided it was time to start making money and rolled out the first ads for YouTube.

In January 2009, the 111th US Congress hopped on the bandwagon and launched official Congressional YouTube channels.

Later that year, Singer Usher introduced the world to Justin Bieber via a video on YouTube. Justin Bieber's song Baby is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube, with more than 820 million views.

And soon, YouTube and Vivendi team up to launch new music video service Vevo.

In January 2010, it started with a few movies that did well at Sundance, and has since grown to offer movies from companies including Paramount, Disney, NBC/Universal, Sony, and Warner Brothers.

Next year, Google reportedly paid more than $100 million to content creators to make videos exclusively for YouTube.
In 2012, for the first time ever, people all over the world were able to watch a live-stream of the Olympics in July 2012. And in December that year, Gangnam Style hit one billion views. It was the number one video on YouTube with more than 1.3 billion views.

The clip from South Korean rapper Psy still reigns as YouTube's most-watched video at 2.3 billion views. The only other video to break the billion barrier so far has been "Baby" by Justin Bieber, but YouTube expects clips by singers Katy Perry, Shakira, Taylor Swift, Meghan Trainor and Miley Cyrus to eventually join the exclusive club.

Maintaining leadership

There has been no official declaration of YouTube’s earnings. However, research firm eMarketer projects YouTube will sell about $4.3 billion in advertising this year, after subtracting commissions and licensing fees.

Market reports suggest that if it were an independent company, YouTube likely would be worth at least $20 billion, based on investors' assessment of Netflix - the Internet's leading video subscription service.

In the latest WTR Global Trademark Benchmarking Survey, YouTube was ranked above Facebook and Twitter as the social network deemed ‘most challenging’ by in-house counsel.

According to market reports, about 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube each minute, or about 432,000 hours per day. That means it would take about 49 years to watch all the videos posted on YouTube on a typical day.

With statistics like this doing rounds, one struggles to remember a time when YouTube did not exist on the Internet. Only time will tell where the video sharing revolution sparked by the website will take in the next decade.